With Midsummer providing an additional boost to XP, I've been working on a Worgen Warrior and the levels have gone rushing by. Right now, I'm leveling as Arms, with Protection as my off spec. The problem is that I've been in too much of a rush to use Protection properly and wonder if I should switch to Furry instead.

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In Chinese: glasses are yanjing; eyes are yanjing, and the beer of Beijing is Yanjing. When speaking, the difference is in the tones. Did I just order a glass of beer or a glass of eyes?

On the topic of Fury warriors, I enjoy playing like that. If you're level 69 or over, there's always the Titan's Grip talent to dual wield two handers, which can look amazing with the right weapons. (And, with transmog, you can choose what looks the most badass for your character). Honestly, for questing, the playstyle isn't radically different from Arms. With the right weapons and some hit, you'll beat the crap out of everything, like geared warriors do. For questing, it seems - to me - to be more of a visual/mental thing. How do you like seeing and imagining your warrior?

Worgen warriors do look pretty ferocious dual wielding. Maybe try re-speccing your Arms tree into Fury, give it a couple of hours to play with and see if you like it. I tend to quest as Fury.

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Rorschach wrote:

For my own part, regret nothing. Have lived life, free from compromise ... and step into the shadow now without complaint.

Go for it! I think I've burned through around 20 levels this weekend. Of course, the weather has been horrible and I've been trying to stay in front of the a/c, so YMMV. Igor has full heirlooms except for the ring and started with full rested XP. He has also been taking advantage of the holiday XP boost, honoring and desecrating fires and also hitting Mining and Archaeology whenever possible.

Edited, Jun 24th 2012 9:48am by Rhodekylle

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In Chinese: glasses are yanjing; eyes are yanjing, and the beer of Beijing is Yanjing. When speaking, the difference is in the tones. Did I just order a glass of beer or a glass of eyes?

However, I usually level/quest as protection: gather up 3-5 mobs, kill them all, repeat as needed. It seems faster to me.

Protection Rules once you get to about... I dunno, Level 40-50 or so. This persists well into the 70s (esp once you get Shockwave at 69), and if at 78 you get your paws on some Cata greens, you're an unstoppable force that steamrolls everything.

But then, sadly, somewhere in the mid 80s, mobs start dying too slowly for my tastes, especially at 85 when you're doing Tol Barad or Molten Front Dailies, even if you're wearing 360+ I-level, the DPS is slow. 80-81 isn't too bad if you're a blacksmith who's willing to go out and mine up 170-ish Obsidium Ore for the full Hardened Obsidium set (this stuff lasts up until late Deepholm gear!), but sadly there's no 1H strength craftables at 81 (blaaaaah). Around 83 or so, mobs start taking a lot longer to die for all classes, but tanks in particular.

Your best attacks crit for a measly 12-15k damage (you see 40k crits with a DPS spec if you're similarly geared), you might see an 18k if the stars align just right (some vengeance from multiple mobs, Shield Block + SnB+ Shield Slam (with talents) Critical might give you 20k. Maybe if you already had 3 sunders on the target. But how often do you really get Shield Slam + SnB + Shield Block crits?

I don't understand the fetish either, but I know some of their artists (seriously, the fandom has some of THE best artists I have Ever seen when considering the quality of the artwork itself, despite the subject matter) make some really awesome stuff if you can get past the fact the "people" in the pieces aren't humans. They are almost always anthro, though. You can, with some imagination, just imagine that those are people instead of humanized animals.

Protection Rules once you get to about... I dunno, Level 40-50 or so. This persists well into the 70s (esp once you get Shockwave at 69), and if at 78 you get your paws on some Cata greens, you're an unstoppable force that steamrolls everything.

Protection rules from 10-40 as well. I went Protection on my Warrior at level 10 (after a brief and mildly underwhelming affair with Arms and Fury) and steamrolled my way to level 40. So much, in fact, that I started queuing up as DPS and didn't bother switching to my Arms/Fury spec.

The secret is to get Blood and Thunder as fast as possible (level 11). Once you have B&T, you'll dominate AOE fights. It's ridiculous. Granted, I was in heirloom gear, but I destroyed other players in damage done, it wasn't even funny (well, actually it was, but also a bit sad).

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Please "talk up" if your comprehension white-shifts. I will use simple-happy language-words to help you understand.

The secret is to get Blood and Thunder as fast as possible (level 11). Once you have B&T, you'll dominate AOE fights. It's ridiculous. Granted, I was in heirloom gear, but I destroyed other players in damage done, it wasn't even funny (well, actually it was, but also a bit sad).

Protection rules from 10-40 as well. I went Protection on my Warrior at level 10 (after a brief and mildly underwhelming affair with Arms and Fury) and steamrolled my way to level 40. So much, in fact, that I started queuing up as DPS and didn't bother switching to my Arms/Fury spec.

I tend not to do a lot of AoE, though I would admit I did notice that BnT did quite well.

The thing I don't like, though, is at early levels...

1). No Charge in Def Stance, and no charge in combat 2). No Devastate (your most awesome "mash this to kill single target" button for a long time) 3). No Crit Immunity

Most of this stuff is post-40, so that's why I said 40+.

I normally do 1-3 mobs at once while questing; the lack of any single-target DPS turns me off on Prot Pre-40. I found Arms nice to fill the gap, on equal-level mobs with Heirlooms, you kill everything in 2 hits. Charge, Mortal Strike, dead. Walk up, Victory Rush, dead. Charge, Mortal Strike, dead.

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The secret is to get Blood and Thunder as fast as possible (level 11). Once you have B&T, you'll dominate AOE fights. It's ridiculous. Granted, I was in heirloom gear, but I destroyed other players in damage done, it wasn't even funny (well, actually it was, but also a bit sad).

I have an 27 mage, and an 84 hunter. I have level 85's for the other eight classes.

In general, I prefer to quest/level tanking classes as tanks. If it's pretty easy to gather 3 or more at a time as a tank, imho it's faster than killing them in dps spec one at a time. Dual-spec is the best of both worlds: if the monsters are pretty thick, plow through them in tank spec; if the monsters are more scarce, kill them one by one as dps.

I guess I'm really just throwing this out there for players who automatically quest/level in dps spec and never even consider trying it in tank spec.

Play to your spec's advantage. If you go Protection, go AOE. Forget pulling targets one at a time; run in and pull them all!

Lyrailis wrote:

1). No Charge in Def Stance, and no charge in combat 2). No Devastate (your most awesome "mash this to kill single target" button for a long time) 3). No Crit Immunity

Starting from behind here.

3) None of the other specs have crit immunity, so you can't hold that against Protection. Your board still gives you a defensive advantage. 2) Devastate is underwhelming, even at higher levels. It's not your "mash to kill" button, it's your "mash to keep aggro" button. Your "mash to kill" button is Shield Slam. 1) The lack of a Defensive Stance charge sucks, aye, but stance dancing is key. Go Battle Stance, charge in, switch to Defensive Stance. You won't keep much (if any) of the rage it generates, but it does give you the mobility. As for charging in combat, Arms won't give you that ability until level 49 at the earliest and Fury doesn't have an ability that makes Charge usable in combat at all.

Lyrailis wrote:

the lack of any single-target DPS turns me off on Prot Pre-40.

What? When did you level up your Protection Warrior? Shield Slam kills stuff so fast now. Or at least it did back in January, I don't know if they've patched anything since then. Shield Slam is like Mortal Strike, except it also dispels buffs and HoTs and such on hits.

My Warrior rivaled Hunters and Rogues on bosses in dungeons. And I completely blew them out of the water when I was tanking the boss (due to Vengeance). If your pre-40 Protection Warrior has crappy single-target DPS then you're doing something completely wrong. I'm talking about Donald wrong.

Edited, Jun 27th 2012 1:13pm by Mazra

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Please "talk up" if your comprehension white-shifts. I will use simple-happy language-words to help you understand.

Play to your spec's advantage. If you go Protection, go AOE. Forget pulling targets one at a time; run in and pull them all!

Just to make things clear, I am talking about solo PvE, not dungeons.

The problem with AoE pulling is that a lot of times, mobs are too far spread apart. Sometimes, some quests this isn't the case and you can easily round up a bunch of mobs, but yet I find that a lot of times I'll see 2 mobs here, a mob over there, maybe a couple more way over there... which leads me to my next points:

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Starting from behind here.

3) None of the other specs have crit immunity, so you can't hold that against Protection. Your board still gives you a defensive advantage.

I was comparing Prot Pre-40 to Prot Post-40. I wasn't comparing Prot to Arms.

Shield Slam has a 6 second cooldown. My Level 82 Warrior does ~4000 damage with it. He's wearing full crafted gear (hardened obsidium), and a quested sword, that's about the best he's capable of getting without running a dungeon. Devastate has a 1.5 second cooldown (GCD to be technical) and does ~2400 damage on the first use. 4th Devastate and up, he's doing quite a bit more. The only time Shield Slam does significantly more damage than Devastate is when he's got Sword and Board Active and I use Shield Block (which has a 30 second cooldown).

Normal Shield Slams, however, they do roughly 30% more damage than Devastate, but have 4x as long of a cooldown.

Getting Devastate gives you a huge increase to your single-target DPS, especially when you consider that Devastate also applies Sunders which makes everything else you do even more damage.

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1) The lack of a Defensive Stance charge sucks, aye, but stance dancing is key. Go Battle Stance, charge in, switch to Defensive Stance. You won't keep much (if any) of the rage it generates, but it does give you the mobility. As for charging in combat, Arms won't give you that ability until level 49 at the earliest and Fury doesn't have an ability that makes Charge usable in combat at all.

Arms/Fury doesn't need In-Combat charge; you're likely fighting single mobs in rapid succession, charging a target, killing it, then charging the next and killing it too, etc. The reason why I like in-combat charge for Prot is, yes, for rounding up mobs. My routine goes something like this:

I'll throw my weapon at one mob (btw, you don't get Heroic Throw until 20). I'll taunt a second mob. I'll charge at the third mob (which you can't do until you get appropriate talents).

If there are any other mobs nearby, I'll body pull them as well. I usually drop a Rend on the mob I charged and when they're all close enough, I start that whole Thunderclap/Cleave spam while throwing Devastates and Shield Slams when I can, praying I get my first Victory Rush soon.

Well, I can't throw my weapon until 20, so that leaves 1 ranged attack out, and I can't charge while in combat until a bit later which means I take several more hits while slowly running over to the third mob.

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What? When did you level up your Protection Warrior? Shield Slam kills stuff so fast now. Or at least it did back in January, I don't know if they've patched anything since then. Shield Slam is like Mortal Strike, except it also dispels buffs and HoTs and such on hits.

See above for comparisons between Devastate and Shield Slam damage.

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My Warrior rivaled Hunters and Rogues on bosses in dungeons. And I completely blew them out of the water when I was tanking the boss (due to Vengeance). If your pre-40 Protection Warrior has crappy single-target DPS then you're doing something completely wrong. I'm talking about Donald wrong.

Edited, Jun 27th 2012 1:13pm by Mazra

Maybe not crappy DPS, per se, but quite a bit less DPS than Post-40 with Devastate would have. The spec just feels clunky when you're missing several key buttons that you're frequently mashing at later levels. If you play a Level 70+ Prot Warrior and then go back to a Level 10 prot warrior its... "No Heroic Throw? No Devastate? No Shockwave? No Concussion Blow?" I end up staring at my hotkey bar, going "come on, hurry up Thunderclap/Shield Slam" while waiting on those abilities to cool down.

Great, I'd written out a long *** reply last night, but apparently I stumbled to bed before hitting the Post button. I don't remember much from yesterday evening/night, I'll be honest.

Anyway...

About the Shield Slam vs Devastate thing: Both are pretty underwhelming when you get into high level Cataclysm content. Mostly because stuff just has so much health there. The reason your Shield Slam is doing so little damage compared to Devastate is because you're wearing full tanking gear. Less strength, less attack power. Shield Slam scales with your attack power, which means it hurts like **** at end-game levels where you can stack Vengeance and get 20k attack power no problem. It also has a pretty high base value, which is why it hurts like **** at lower levels where stuff doesn't have +100k health from gear.

I agree that it sucks at level 82. Everything sucks at level 82, unless you go DPS. Stuff just takes way too long to die.

I took a Gnome Warrior to level 40-ish before I unsubscribed. Running dungeons (and AOE in general) gets fun around the mid-20's when you get access to Shield Specialization and Cleave. I find that every class is pretty boring until the mid-20's, because you lack so many core abilities.

Lyrailis wrote:

Maybe not crappy DPS, per se, but quite a bit less DPS than Post-40 with Devastate would have.

Yes, naturally your DPS is going to be lower than before you get your main attack, but it's still not lower than most of the damage dealers at those levels. Lacking Devastate doesn't matter when Shield Slam and Thunder Clap spam (with Blood and Thunder) generates such a high amount of DPS.

You're comparing a pre-40 Warrior to a post-40 Warrior. Stop that. Compare them to other classes at those same levels. Your personal damage output before and after you get Devastate doesn't mean anything. You lack Devastate and every other class lacks some major ability. I assure you, once you get Devastate, you'll no longer be able to out-damage DPS specs in single target fights.

I agree that the "rotation" feels clunky without a "filler" like Devastate. I used Sunder Armor before I got Devastate. No damage on hit, but it lowers the armor rating, increasing your overall DPS. And it's something to spend your APM on at least.

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Please "talk up" if your comprehension white-shifts. I will use simple-happy language-words to help you understand.